OU hung with No. 1 Auburn for thirty-one minutes, but Jabari Smith was just too much as the game wore on.
Jabari Smith is the smoothest player I’ve seen so far on the college level this season. When Bruce Pearl teams him with the seven-foot Walker Kessler they in my mind have the best front-line I’ve seen so far this basketball season. Their skill sets complement one another.
I think Baylor’s guards are better than what Auburn puts on the floor and Kentucky may have more overall roster talent, but Jabari Smith is my new No. 1 with Palo Banchero my new No. 2. This means Sam Presti will probably draft the gawky white kid from Gonzaga who might even take longer to develop than Poku.
Presti won’t take either one of these guys even if the Thunder hit the lottery. It’s not his style minus the drafting Kevin Durant. He wants to make a pick no one saw coming so he can be perceived as some sort of talent evaluator savant.
What I would say to that is…. Cole Aldrich, Mitch McGary, Jeremy Lamb, Alex Abrines, Terrance Ferguson, Josh Huestis, Darius Bazely, and Poku the Fabulous.
Presti will pick the gawky emaciated kid from Gonzaga…no doubt. He won’t take a player who can actually shoot a basketball. He must have signed some sort of pact with some basketball deity where he swore if the hoops gods gave him Kevin Durant he would never draft another basketball player who could actually shoot a basketball. Kind of like in the old movie…Damn Yankees. I think that movie starred William Demerest if my old mind remembers correctly.
OU never had a real chance in this game because of Auburn’s defensive presence at the rim. There were no easy OU baskets on back cuts which usually lead to somewhat easy buckets. OU usually shoots around fifty percent from the field, but in this game there were no easy looks. Every bucket was a tall order…excuse the pun.
Next up for OU…another Season on the Brink type of game for the Sooners when they host pesky TCU which beat ranked LSU today in the Big 12-SEC challenge.
The SEC was the better hoops league today. I’m thinking that might reduce the Big 12’s number of teams to either six for sure or maybe seven. We’ll see.
Keep an eye on my Cinderella sleeper in Texas Tech. I love how Mark Adams has the Red Raiders turning into what I think is a Top 8 type of team right now. I think the Red Raiders are much more dangerous than Chris Beard’s Longhorns. I thought OU should have beaten Kansas…so in my mind the two best teams in the Big 12 right now are Texas Tech and Baylor.
In closing…if anyone spots EJ Harkless roaming the streets of Norman on Sunday please call Porter Moser so he’ll know where his toughest player was the past week.